Join us for the second Engelsberg Chair lecture of 2021/22 on alliances and war, delivered by historian Margaret MacMillan.

The year 1917 marked a significant change with the revolutions in Russia and its withdrawal from the war and the entry of the United States. The lecture will look at the shifting balance of power and the changes in the alliances of the opposing sides and it will assess the part played by each in the ending of the war and the Allied victory. Finally it will examine the role of alliance relationships in the making of the peace.

Meet our speaker and chair

Margaret MacMillan is Engelsberg Chair at LSE IDEAS for 2021/22. Margaret MacMillan is Emeritus Professor of International History at the University of Oxford and former Warden of St Antony’s College, University of Oxford. She specializes in the history of the British Empire and the international history of the 19th and 20th centuries. Her book Peacemakers: The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and Its Attempt to End War won the Samuel Johnson Prize. In 2021, Margaret won the Pritzker Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing. Her most recent book is War: How Conflict Shaped Us, looking at the ways in which war has influenced human society and how, in turn, changes in political organization, technology, or ideologies have affected how and why we fight.

Piers Ludlow is Professor and Head of Department at the Department of International History, LSE. He studied for his undergraduate degree at Trinity College, Oxford before moving on to St Antony's College Oxford to study for his D.Phil. He was then a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at Balliol College, Oxford until he joined LSE in 1998. His main research interests lie in the history of Western Europe since 1945, in particular the historical roots of the integration process and the development of the EU.

More about this event

This is the second Engelsberg Chair lecture of the 2021-2022 academic year. The theme of the series is Marriages of Convenience or Something More? Alliances in War.

States make alliances out of self-interest, fear or ideology and the ensuing relationships are rarely easy especially when they are put to the test of war. Alliances can make and keep the peace or lead to conflict and in so doing have helped to shape, for better or worse, the modern world. This series of lectures examines the nature, dynamics and types of alliances and suggests reasons why they succeed or fail. While alliances have been a feature of state to state relations since the ancient world, the main focus in these lectures will be on the 20th century and the great global conflicts of the First and Second World Wars.

LSE IDEAS (@lseideas) is LSE's foreign policy think tank. Through sustained engagement with policymakers and opinion-formers, IDEAS provides a forum that informs policy debate and connects academic research with the practice of diplomacy and strategy.

Twitter Hashtag for this event: #LSEEngelsberg

Podcast & Video

A podcast of this event is available to download from Victory and the Making of Peace: the Allies in the First World War.

A video of this event is available to watch at Victory and the Making of Peace: the Allies in the First World War.

Podcasts and videos of many LSE events can be found at the LSE Public Lectures and Events: podcasts and videos channel.